The U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory (NEL) was created in 1945, with consolidation of the naval radio station, radar operators training school, and radio security activity of the Navy Radio and Sound Lab (NRSL) and its wartime partner, the University of California Division of War Research. NEL's charter was “to effectuate the solution of any problem in the field of electronics, in connection with the design, procurement, testing, installation and maintenance of electronic equipment for the U.S. Navy”. Its radio communications and sonar work was augmented with basic research in the propagation of electromagnetic energy in the atmosphere and of sound in the ocean.
History
In November 1945, the Navy Radio and Sound Lab was renamed as Navy Electronics Laboratory. 80% of the Point Loma Military Reservation evolved into the Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC) at the end of World War II. In turn NELC was merged into the Naval Ocean Systems Center (NOSC) in 1977. This eventually was merged into the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in 1997.
In the 1960s, NELC was tasked with 4C: Command, Control, Communications and Computers.
Projects
Shipboard Antenna Model Range
left|thumb|150px|Shipboard Antenna Model Range photograph showing location of model ship.
As one of its first projects, NEL began building its Shipboard Antenna Model Range. The non-metallic arch of this structure supports a transmitting antenna which is positioned toward a brass model ship on a turntable. The ground plane under the arch simulates the electrical characteristics of the ocean, allowing research on the properties of shipboard antennas to be carried out.
Arctic submarine exploration
right|thumb|150px|Battery Whistler facility, c. 1948.
It also began conversion of a World War II mortar emplacement, Battery Whistler, into an Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Scientific exploration of the Arctic Basin, and particularly providing the capability to operate attack submarines in the Arctic under the ice canopy, would become a key NEL mission.
left|thumb|150px|[[USS Baya (SS-318)|USS Baya and research vessel USS Rexburg were part of a small but active fleet of ships used by NEL.]]
World headlines came early in this program from several events—the submerged voyage of USS Nautilus from the Pacific to the Atlantic, via the North Pole, in 1958, with NEL's Dr. Waldo Lyon aboard as chief scientist and ice pilot. That same summer, the USS Skate cruised from the Atlantic to the North Pole and the central Arctic Ocean, surfacing 9 times through small holes in the ice cap. Dr. Eugene C. La Fond, head of NEL's Oceanography Branch, was chief scientist
In March 1959, the Skate returned to the Arctic, under winter conditions, with Dr. Waldo Lyon as chief scientist, and for the first time, the nuclear submarine was able to surface exactly at the North Pole.